Quiet Incumbents: 77 Full-and-Open Federal Contracts Worth $41.9B Got Exactly One Offer and Expire by September 2027

77 federal contracts worth $41.86B were competed full and open, received exactly one offer, and expire in the next 12 months.

One offer on a full-and-open solicitation is not a sole source. The agency did not pick the incumbent. It asked the market, and the market declined. Every one of those 77 is a recompete where the incumbent has never actually had to beat anyone.

We call them quiet incumbents. Here is how we found them and who they are.

Search CACI's clocks · Score any incumbent · Recompete Radar

The method

Start with the same pool as yesterday's Q1 FY2027 list, widened to 12 months: every contract (award types A-D) of $20M or more with an action between Sep 13, 2025 and Sep 13, 2026 and a current end date between Sep 14, 2026 and Sep 30, 2027. That is 748 contracts, $746.33B obligated to date.

Then pull the award record for each one and read two fields FPDS has carried for twenty years and almost nobody sorts by:

Of the 748:

Seventeen percent. Roughly one in six large competed contracts in the pool was, in practice, uncontested.

Who the quiet incumbents sell to

40 civilian, $18.39B. That is the list a firm without a prime aircraft contract can work.

The 20 largest civilian quiet incumbents

Read the fourth column and the last one together.

Two of the GSA rows literally say bridge task order in the description. CACI's $886M and Booz Allen's $663M CDM DEFEND orders are bridges, awarded because the follow-on was not ready. They both end Apr 30, 2027. A bridge that drew one offer is the definition of an agency waiting for someone else to show up.

Nine of the twenty are NAICS 541512 or 518210, IT services and hosting, at CMS, VA, CBP, Interior, and GSA. That is the exact market where a mid-size integrator with the right past performance can be the second offer.

The DoD side, for completeness

Platforms. One offer on a helicopter program is not an opening for anyone who does not already build helicopters. Skip these unless you are a tier-one supplier to the incumbent, in which case the recompete is your renegotiation.

When they end

35 of the 77 end by Dec 31, 2026, worth $18.60B. The September ones are getting bridged or extended this week. The Oct-Dec ones have follow-on solicitations either on the street or in final review.

Why one offer is the signal that matters

A sole-source award tells you the agency believes only one company can do the work. Nothing you do changes that belief before the recompete.

A full-and-open award with one offer tells you something different: the agency wanted a second offer. It wrote the solicitation for competition. It got none. That happens for three reasons, and all three are fixable:

On a one-offer recompete, the incumbent's win probability is high, but their price discipline is usually low. Nobody has made them sharpen the pencil since award. That is where the second offer wins.

What to do this week

Bottom line

77 contracts. $41.86B. One offer each. The agencies asked for competition and did not get it. 40 of them are civilian, worth $18.39B, and nine of the top twenty are IT services at CMS, VA, CBP, Interior, and GSA. You do not need to beat the incumbent on their best day. You need to be the second envelope on a recompete where there has never been one.

Find the quiet incumbent in your market. Recompete Radar shows the offers count on every expiring contract. Score them before you commit a capture budget.

Primary sources: USASpending.gov /api/v2/search/spending_by_award/ (award types A-D, award_amounts lower_bound $20,000,000, action dates Sep 13, 2025 to Sep 13, 2026) locally filtered to End Date Sep 14, 2026 to Sep 30, 2027, then /api/v2/awards/{generated_internal_id}/ for latest_transaction_contract_data.extent_competed and number_of_offers_received on all 748 awards. Pulled Sep 13, 2026. Offers count is as entered in FPDS by the contracting officer on the latest transaction.